Inventing the esthetics of the Afro-modern body: black French and the Atlantic circulation of beauty

Abstract

Exploring the black body usually means delving into endogenous and exogenous imaginaries to deconstruct how it has long symbolized a desired or repelled otherness. In the light of Paul Gilroy and James Clifford's works, one may consider the black body in terms of space and circulation. This analyzes how contemporary cultural, social, and economic interactions between African and Afro-descendant people have turned the black body into a space of encounter which parts become elements to represent a global black self encompassing local, national, ethnic, and diasporan ascriptions. It interrogates the commodification of this body as the predicament of multi-scaled identities and crossed visions of blackness in the twenty-first century. This study explores images formed by the black media and international trademarks and questions the connection between esthetics, politics, and modernity they initiate.